Disability Retirement for Federal Government Employees: The Nexus

In preparing, formulating and filing for Federal Disability Retirement benefits from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, whether under FERS or CSRS, it is the nexus — the connections which are made between any two or more issues, concepts, evidence, etc. — which raises a Federal Disability Retirement application to meet the standard of required proof under the law. Such connections to be made are vital, and determine the success or failure of a Federal Disability Retirement application.

We have all encountered eccentric individuals in our lifetimes — whether of the proverbial “batty-aunt” who talks incessantly about things which nobody understands; or the “flighty friend” who can talk a mile-a-minute about a thousand disconnected issues all in one breath; or perhaps it is a chance-meeting with a stranger who, after a long conversation, one realizes didn’t make a bit of sense in anything that was said. In conversation, one can engage in such language games which have little to no correspondence to reality, and not have to pay a price for such engagement.

In the world of Federal Disability Retirement, failing to make the necessary connections will most certainly lead to a denial of a Federal Disability Retirement application. Thus, the persuasive connection between one’s positional duties and the medical conditions; the argumentative connection between the prevailing law and one’s factual statements; the impacting connection between the medical reports and the entirety of the submitted case; and multiple other connections — each must be carefully crafted.

In a world where we come upon a “noumenal” world (as Kant would state), and where our cognitive categories organize the disparate world we discover, establishing the necessary nexus between X, Y & Z is something which the Federal Disability Retirement applicant should never overlook.